Do you believe in God?

[FreelancePoliceman]

If one exists, I don’t know about it. The claims of organized religions seem to me not very believable, and mystics don’t tend to strike me as trustworthy either.

When I was younger I prayed for guidance and for a connection to God. I didn’t receive any, at least not anything I’d recognize. Despite searching, I’ve never felt the divine, as many people have claimed to. Actually, when people say they’ve found God, I can’t think of any instance where it’s made the person notably better or more insightful, which I would expect to happen, and the only evidence they seem to be able to give for their claims and revealed truths, which are often contradictory, is their own confidence. Generally they struggle even to clearly present a rational rationale for or explanation of the teachings they give back to the world; I might hear something about the importance of “loving everyone,” but they struggle to define or describe what “love” is, or what it would practically mean to love, say, ******; when explaining how we should “love” people like this their definition of “love” invariably begins to get diluted and they begin to sound like a European social democrat talking about prisons and rehabilitative justice, lol. If “love” is defined as “wishing the best for people” (which I was taught in one of my university’s required theology classes was how the RCC defined love) your message of universal love doesn’t strike me as very impressive — I’ve somehow managed to “”love”” everyone on the planet; can I apply to be considered a living saint?? — and yet when you insist this is some revolutionary doctrine, it kind of undermines the ability of anyone to take you seriously.

[FreelancePoliceman]

For me it's a personal thing. You don't have to seek religions and you don't have to be perceived as necessarily better with it. And the thing about some aspects of the world is you just know them. Either you get it or you don't. That's why I actually don't try to convince people of this and other similar concepts as well. But note that "God" could mean something different for someone else, and maybe you have already experienced and seen your own God but you don't define it as God. Though knowing God can be a process but that process that you would actually take unhesitatingly and it involves really unearthing yourself - your strengths, your weaknesses, your beliefs and even your wrongdoings. And I also don't believe that God is to be worshiped and you certainly won't find God in one religion. It probably would expose you to the concept, but it's not necessary.

I've been trying to understand what you mean. If all God is is different things to different people, surely it doesn't actually exist, and trying to determine anything objective about its existence would be pointless?

I'm also not sure why anyone should undergo the process of trying to seek God, when, as I tried to articulate in my earlier post, those who've claimed to succeed don't seem very trustworthy, and the alleged benefits seem dubious.

In any case, it may be that I'm one of the ones who just don't "get it." I suppose that's fine with me.

I think that people in touch with God (I'm talking about my own perception of God at this point) may be more open and tolerant of people most of the time because they have recognized that they are just similar to other human beings leading a path that seems right to them, and that they have acknowledged the fact that no knows everything, so there is a lot of chance for mistakes and that's okay. But I don't think that they will be perceived as better and more insightful. It's a bit tricky because that judgment depends on the person perceiving them, which might have a limited view or intolerant. And having these kinds of criteria (good, better, best, more, less, etc) is outside of the light. Everything is equal. You can think of it this way: Alphas might judge Gamma values harshly and vice versa. Or, a person might think that someone not participating in the rat race is naive and stupid, but would we really know which path is better? The light of God removes all those barriers that limit us to the actual truth. Aside from that, the person who is in touch with God doesn't necessarily have to be "good" all the time, good as in what society thinks is good anyway. For example, people and even some religions expect us to be have clean thoughts all the time. But that's impossible, I am both good and evil. Thinking negatively of the other person and muttering "Fuck that bitch! She's stupid" is just part of being human. But knowing God, I know that I have to reflect on why I had that thought and actually build an intention to shed light on things that make me judge that person harshly.

Reading this post feels slightly like trying to understand a foreign language. I don't mean that as an insult to you; I just think our frameworks of understanding reality are significantly different.

Regarding what I think you're saying about good and evil, though I was indoctrinated with this dualistic kind of framing of "good and evil," it doesn't intuitively seem true or correspond to anything I understand about the world works. Obviously some actions contribute to the good of the individual or of society and some actions contribute to the harm of one or the other, but a statement like "I am both good and evil," as if these are intrinsic qualities of a person that exist in abstraction from that person's actions -- I find it difficult to integrate this into my understanding of the universe, if that makes sense.

Re. what you've said about judging other people, I suppose I see expressions of anger toward other people -- at least ones I make -- as essentially that; frustration. This might be an Fe vs Fi-valuing difference. I don't really form moral categories of people and spend my time and energy sorting people into them, as if when I complain that someone is stupid I'm passing some sort of judgement that all their existence on earth is a waste -- all I'm really saying is "I'm annoyed," and I think I expect people to hear me to understand it that way as well. Though I'd admit that often I shouldn't say, or shouldn't have said, things like that, I'd say I'm pretty much always aware of why I think or express those sorts of thoughts.

Fi valuers I've noticed seem to have a different understanding of personal criticisms and judgements. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there seems to be a feeling that by ascribing someone a description like "stupid," it somehow robs that person of agency -- like it's an act of violence, in a way. IIRC an EII here said something like that to me not long ago. If anyone would like to try to explain this better, I'd be interested to learn.

In any case, the point you made about different people having different values and understandings of the world got through, at least -- that's obvious!

[Tarnished]

I've been trying to understand what you mean. If all God is is different things to different people, surely it doesn't actually exist, and trying to determine anything objective about its existence would be pointless?

I'm also not sure why anyone should undergo the process of trying to seek God, when, as I tried to articulate in my earlier post, those who've claimed to succeed don't seem very trustworthy, and the alleged benefits seem dubious.

In any case, it may be that I'm one of the ones who just don't "get it." I suppose that's fine with me.

I think what she say is some kind of "Personal Enlightenment" lol. For different people, it mean different things. For Christian it's Jesus, for Buddhist it's Nirvana, for Hindu it's Brahma, for Taoism people it's Tao...

And for me it's just simply about understanding myself better, since I don't value any higher purpose. But Taoism and Buddhism really have some nice ideas, only one bad thing about them is they suggest you to remove your ego, and for Te/Fi user like me, nope.

Christianity is suck because it's just tell you to blindly believe in something (God is sooo great and you have to believe in him), no fun at all. Constantinus should chose Zoroastrianism instead.